About

Hello…. my name is Brian….. and I am an observer….

 Yes, for as long as I can remember, I have been watching people in public settings and trying to understand what a particular response means or represents within the context of the situational inputs and deductive reasoning of the subjects involved.   Although the interactions of the parties involved  are quite interesting in themselves, I have mainly focused on my particular assessment of the situation.  What are my assumptions, what is my understanding of the inputs, and ultimately, what would be my reaction given a similar circumstance?   This journal is an attempt to capture these thoughts and weigh them against alternatives.   

 I firmly believe that everyday inputs, whether supportive or corrective play an important role in the decision process.  Therefore, a given cause-effect relationship results in a similar response in the future given the same situation and set of inputs….. but this can never happen.  We have already altered the situation by the mere fact we have received a new result immediately upon our reaction.  We effectively have added another node in the decision tree by our presence and action at that moment.  Additionally, between the point the first situation occurred and the supposed replication of that event we have been bombarded with additional reference points (media, friends, environment, interactions) that in one way or another alter the future decision process.    Clearly humans have a large capacity to learn and even more amazing is our ability to project this learning onto other situations.   What is not so clear to me is why there is such a disparity in responses.  Often times the subjects I happen to observe do not react in the way I would expect and the endeavor to understand those nuances is at the heart of this blog.  So, I hope you find some enjoyment in my various ramblings and I am hoping you might have some insights you are willing to share that would shed some light on a given situation.

 I should probably give some quick background on myself so you have a small glimpse into what shapes my viewpoints.  First and foremost, I have minimal formal education on this particular subject.  What I do have is a significant number of years of personal reference, research and in the field study.  None of that gives me enough authority in any manner to suggest my opinions are correct or apply to any other individual.  The intent of this journal is to give me a mechanism and format to collect and organize my thoughts and potentially initiate conversations on a given topic.  I consider this only a hobby that started when I was very young, expanded by general psychology classes for fun in the summer, formal abnormal psychology electives in college and organization recognition/relations/interaction lectures in an advanced business curriculum.  My true profession is in highly technical computer system architecture and design.  As you are probably thinking to yourself, this is a field that does lend itself to a number interesting situational viewings (… and what led you to that initial conclusion? 😉 but has the additional aspect of very rigid decision process discipline resulting in generally more predictable responses (probably a good future topic).  I was born in the US Midwest to parents who nurtured, protected and provided guidance that set the foundation for my successes to date.  Two older brothers continually inspire me to be better at everything I do.  They are always there to help me and set the standards I strive to meet and maintain.  Then there are my wife and poodles who fill my days with happiness and have the uncanny ability to make sure I balance the web world hobbies and reality.  Analytical transitioning to Driver is probably my best career description with pretty heavy doses of quick assessments technical understanding.  That’s probably enough about me to give you a basis for my viewpoints and opinions – ironically, I would classify myself on the private side and if it wasn’t for an early ’07 commitment to myself, probably would not be attempting this blog at all.

 I do want to close with a couple of quick topics.  The first being visitor privacy.  I do use two stat counting services – in particular StatCounter and Google Analytics.  The only reason for this is to have an understanding of the frequency and breadth of visitors.  It is helpful to know if someone is actually reading what you write.  That is not a key requirement for my efforts on this blog, but if there was significant viewership it may drive me to be more frequent with updates or focus on a particular type of discussion.  All stat information collected by these stat utilities is for this websites use only and not used for any form or external marketing.  Lastly, I can say the decision to actually do this online journal has not been without its share of concerns.  I am very worried that someone I know may misconstrue something I write, have a negative reactive to a given opinion or assessment of a situation or in the worst case feel I am writing specifically about them.  Again, I am more interested in understanding the reactions to situations and in most cases not pass particular judgement on the subject.  I say in most cases, because there are situations that put me over the edge when it comes to the service industry and related expectations which will likely be specifically detailed.  In the other cases,  I will do my very best to think outside of the sentences to prevent this from happening and will be tweaking descriptions to help insure this is avoided.    As far as spelling and grammar go, please accept my apologies in advance for errors that get by my proofing.  Enumerations, recursion and conditional statements, synchronization and business processes are more native to me these days than sentence structure, tense and verse – I will definitely do my best.

 Welcome to Life Intrigued … enjoy

Brian

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